About Tracey

Tracey Yokas creates stuff. When she isn’t writing, she can be found playing with paint, glitter, and glue. Art fuels her passion for connection. Tracey lives in Southern California with her family, and aspires to share her truth so others will know they are not alone. Each time she takes a risk and shines a light on her family’s struggle with mental illness, stigma and ignorance lessen. Tracey holds a BS in Communications from Ohio University and a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology from California Lutheran University.

Tracey has contributed articles to iPinion Syndicate (here), and had essays selected to appear in two anthologies: Belly Shame: Stories from the Gut edited by Debra LoGuercio DeAngelo and The Walls Between Us: essays in search of truth edited by Beth Kephart.

"We're all just walking each other home."

–Ram Dass

Notes on Gratitude

Memorial Day with Liz Gilbert and Rob Bell

30May2016

My Big Magic Moment

Three months ago I saw an ad for tickets to spend A Day With Liz Gilbert and Rob Bell and immediately bought one. Liz’s book, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, had been on the shelf behind my desk for months. I bought it because learning how to live life less fearfully and more creatively is one of my passions, but I'd been so busy trying to "do" creatively that I hadn’t gotten around to reading it. I figured the next best thing would be to see her in person. I didn’t know much about Rob except that he was Liz’s friend, and any friend of Liz’s, I assumed, would be worth listening to. I was ready to receive wisdom on life, creativity, and writing. They didn’t disappoint.

Monday morning, three hundred of my closest friends and I showed up at Wanderlust in Hollywood. Since I hadn’t read Big Magic or Rob’s book How To Be Here, I didn’t set any expectations, and I’m glad I went in blind. My oblivion fed my experience, which was a lot of fun. I even had a Big Magic epiphany.

Rob and Liz arrived by dancing down the center aisle, mugging it up to our cheers and picture taking. At the front of the room, they struck a couple of Charlie’s Angels poses, and then got down to business. Liz announced that we were going to spend our day talking about six different words. Had I cracked Big Magic’s spine, I would have been familiar with the words ahead of time, but c’est la vie. Instead, I was delighted and surprised when she announced that the first word was courage. (Read my post on courage here.)

Liz and Rob talked about what courage means to them, what it looks and feels like, its necessity in living creatively, and how being nicer to ourselves can bolster our courage. I’m working on it!, I thought. Liz went on to define what creative living--the foundation of Big Magic--means to her, and I loved it. She said that creative living has a broader definition than creativity alone. “Creative living is any life where you make decisions more often from curiosity than fear.” She continued, “If you do it often enough, it becomes your habit, and your lifebecomes the work of art.” (emphasis mine)

Whoa.

Then she capped her definition off with this gem: “Creative living is a way of being in the world that’s co-created by the universe.” Who doesn’t want a life co-created by the universe? I sure do.

I’ve read about creativity and its power to manifest our uniqueness in the world, but I hadn’t considered the idea on a grander scale. That by harnessing the power of courage, creativity, choice, and curiosity we are tapping directly into the divine. What some might call, “Source.” This connection to Source then helps us become, on the ultimate level, who we are meant to be.

Of course, any conversation that includes courage is naturally going to include fear, and that’s where our first assignment began. Liz told us to write a letter to ourselves from our fear. I hadn’t expected to be writing. I know! What else would a couple of writers ask a room full of people to do? Luckily, I was prepared, and she told us exactly how to start: “Dear fill in your name, I am your fear and this is what I want to tell you.” And off we went writing letters to ourselves from our fear and then discussing what we wrote with our neighbor.

Enchantment came next, and persistence was third. My persistence letter was a real eye opener. For me, another word that can be substituted for persistence is diligence. Diligence has a starring role in my memoir. It’s been my way of facing the world for as long as there’s been a me. Diligence kept me safe. But my diligence, like many virtuous qualities, had a flip side. Or so I thought. I thought it was my diligence that criticized me, that constantly nagged me. I felt sure this was true as Liz described that many of us have shame around persistence/diligence because we think there’s a road behind us that’s littered with the things we didn’t finish or accomplish. “But,” she said, “there’s another road behind you as well, and that’s the one filled with all that you did do.” True, isn’t it? The way our inner critic only focuses on the negative. (Read my post about my inner critic here.) Our persistence letters, Liz added, would likely be defensive. Mine, it turned out, was a love letter.

Here’s what I wrote:

Dear Tracey,
I am your persistence/diligence and this is what I want you to know about me. Regardless of what you think, I have always had your back. I’ve been on this journey with you since there was a you. I may not always have looked the way you thought I should or done the things you wanted, but I have always been here for you. All the way back to when you diligently tried to be a good little girl, the best little girl you could be and felt like that wasn’t enough; that you weren’t enough. You thought it was me telling you those awful things. Not so. In fact, everything you’ve done, what you’ve survived, how you’ve thrived, was possible because I’ve been here rooting you on. I am your biggest fan. I spurred you on and encouraged you to do better because I knew what you were capable of. I was dropping breadcrumbs along the trail that lead not to the witch’s house, but here—to your destiny of becoming your best self.

Whoa, again.

I stopped writing, shocked. I felt a tug at my heart. My diligence, I realized, was beseeching me to understand its point of view. “I’m one of the good guys,” it said. Who would’ve thought?

I had to leave early and didn't get to write about the last two words, but that's okay because I had my own Big Magic moment. The moment I realized my diligence is on my side and always was.

That's my two cents. What's yours? Is there a part of yourself you once thought one way about and now think differently about? For better or worse? If so, I'd love to hear about it.

P.S. My friend Rosa Kwon Easton wrote a wonderful post about the same event. You can read her post here.

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2 comments on article "Memorial Day with Liz Gilbert and Rob Bell"

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Kris

6/2/2016 12:29 PM

Thanks for sharing! Sounds like a great workshop. I have read Big Magic -- her message about not pushing aside your interactions with creativity really spoke to me. Fear is trying to get in the way, but I'm doing my best not to let it. I'm happy to hear that Diligence is your ally -- hooray for that!

I was there too! It would have been so great to see you. There were so many people I guess I'm not surprised we didn't run into each other! The last three words were Permission, Trust and Divinity. Liz asked us to write a permission slip to ourselves from the principal starting with "I am your principal and I am allowing you to do something, or giving you permission to never do something again...." The next was a letter to our enchantment from trust, starting with "Dear Enchantment, You can trust me. This is the space I'm going to make for you...." The last was a letter back to our fear from divinity, saying "Dear Fear, Don't worry, everything is going to be okay...." Obviously there was a lot more to it but I left the day thinking that we are being creative every day because each of have lives that no one else has done before! Thanks for sharing!

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